Catherine O'Hare is a lifestyle coach in the Loch Lomond Area

Goldilocks and the three hair colours

This weekend I got my hair done, nothing unusual in that – I get it done every few weeks. However, this time I was getting it ‘fixed’. I’ve had blonde hair for years, various different shades but blonde and no deviation. I was known for being pedantic about my hair. I even had a vision board for my hair colour. I’m lucky my stylist Claire Gallacher was my friend before she started doing my hair. She’s told me on numerous occasions that I’d have been ousted as a client by now if that hadn’t been the case.

In October I decided that I needed a change, I had become too safe with my hair and was getting too set in my ways. I needed to shake it up a bit. To be honest, it wasn’t just the hair, there were things going on in my life, I was making changes inside and I felt I had to illustrate those changes physically, so the hair colour was the most obvious way to do so.

So I became a brunette. Bit of a drastic change, from a high lift light blonde to a dark chestnut brown with red in it.

Blonde hair to start with….

My mum didn’t believe it was me when I text her a picture of it. And I loved it, it was great, it’s amazing what a different hair colour can do. It changes your make up, the clothes you choose to wear, all sorts of stuff. I’d forgotten that all that happened because it had been so long since I had made any changes to my coiffure.

Brunette coiffure – wee bit of a change!

Then in December, the day before Christmas Eve to be precise, Claire came to do my hair again. I told her I had enjoyed being a brunette, but I wanted to change again. It didn’t feel ‘right’. This time I wanted to try red. So the colour was stripped out my hair and it was dyed red. And I didn’t like it, it was too pale. So Claire dyed it again, and I didn’t like it, it was too dark. Claire had to go to another client so she left me the dye to put on again myself on Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve and I put the dye on, washed it off, didn’t like it, again it just didn’t feel right. Decided I wanted to be blonde again so called Claire to ask if I could bleach it out. She warned me that if I did so, my hair would go a strange colour and she couldn’t do anything with it until the Friday after Christmas.

Did I listen? No. I bought a tub of bleach and a bottle of peroxide, mixed it up and slapped it on. And my hair did go a funny colour. A strange white blonde with 2 inches of pinky orange roots. Delightful. And it had to stay that way until the Friday after Christmas, when Claire did some wizardry to it to make it look presentable and told me to leave it alone for a month to recover before she did anything else.

I think I spent a month with a ponytail in. Then at the weekend it was fixed. I’m now blonde again, a darker, more golden blonde with copper lowlights. And I love it, it feels right again :).

So why am I telling you about my hair tribulations? Do you really need to hear about the torture I put poor Claire through? No, but the lesson I learned is this: I’m not a hairdresser, I haven’t spend time learning my craft, doing seminars and studying under the best there is to learn from all over the UK. So how could I expect to do my own thing and get the results I wanted? Yes, I managed to remove the red, but I didn’t do it the right way and I’m lucky I still have hair left. If you want to do something – be it change your hair colour or lose weight and keep it off, find an expert, someone who knows what they are doing and go to them. You’ll get better results in a shorter time.